For the ladies – modest fashions

Make the most of this summer, ladies, because this may well be the last year when you will be able to wear those lovely short skirts and sleeveless blouses around town and also those skimpy bikinis on the beach. Next year there will be a change and in the summers to come your summer clothes will be quite, quite different. Believe me!

Over the past few years, Modest Fashion has become the latest trend in the Western non-Islamic countries. Recently, the London College of Fashion set up a research project to study the apparently ‘growing market for modest clothing amongst women of the three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Christianity and Judaism’. Even the leading fashion houses of Hermes, Esté Lauder and Dolce & Gabana have launched exclusive collections of modest clothes for women because, according to the Huffington Post, they are ‘…intrigued by the emphasis given to the design rather than the body of the woman’.

Or was it perhaps the money, for this ‘Modest Fashion’ industry is now estimated to be worth US$96 billion and rapidly growing. In February this year (2017), the first British Muslim-friendly Modest Fashion Show for women took place in London while in Tokyo, Japan, the second annual Modest Fashion show will be taking place in the Halal Expo there in the autumn.

Check your daily paper or weekly magazine and you’ll still see women in the skimpy, body-revealing clothes we’ve become used to over the past 100 years, but if you check on-line for ‘Modest Fashion’, you may be surprised at how many such web sites there are.

For instance, on BBC Radio 1, their Advice programme declares:

The profile of modest fashion is rising. Historically dressing conservatively has been at odds with what’s considered ‘cool’ in Western fashion trends, but more considered covered looks are increasingly becoming more appealing to young adults.

On a web site entitled Style and Virtue there are Modesty guidelines ‘…as mentioned on the Laura Ingraham Show’. ‘Pure Fashion models are more than just fashion models’ they are ROLE MODELS!’ it declares and adds: ‘Pure Fashion clothing styles flatter the figure, without drawing undo attention to any particular area.’

Apparently, according to Style and Virtue:

Necklines should be four fingers below the collarbone’, ‘Pants can be form-fitting but not too tight, especially in the seat or thigh area’ and of course, ‘Dresses need sleeves or two-inch wide straps’. Even some shoes can be unsuitable: ‘Not all shoes are modest. Some speak a whole language – extra platform or overly strappy heels might be sending the wrong message.

And finally, ‘Let your clothing be a testament of your dignity as a young lady. What you choose to wear can affect your behaviour.’

A Sky News report on the London Fashion Show goes further, quoting a Saira Khan that ‘I think it’s about wanting to wear fashionable clothes without attracting the attention of the opposite sex’.

I’m glad to say that Julie Burchill, writing in the Daily Mail on 29th June 2017, slammed the ‘great cover-up’ of the new modesty dressing, saying she finds this new trend disturbing, something with which I would agree. As she says, this mild-sounding term has historically been used as a tool of oppression. Throughout the centuries, where body-covering clothes have not been necessary for warmth, they have been imposed by men who use the word ‘modest’ to mean ‘you’re my woman and I don’t want you showing your body to other men’.

And the fashion leaders are falling for it. When the Duchess of Cambridge attended the wedding of her sister Pippa in a fussy, mid-calf dress she was called ‘frumpy’ by fashion writers; in a post-honeymoon photo, Pippa wore a long-sleeved, ankle-length dress which was more than frumpy and was eye-catching for all the wrong reasons.

Well, she’s married now so perhaps her husband has become a post-modern man and has decided that he, too, doesn’t want his wife showing any part of her body to other men.

And this could trigger another trend, one amongst men, for now several western, non-Muslim celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow have been pictured in very modest dresses, covering just about everything but high neck and face, hands and a few toes.

But how did this ‘faith-based’ and ‘pious’ modest clothing for those not faith-based or pious start? Who set it in motion? For this is not a natural revolving of the fashion, where short dresses are replaced by the next generation of girls with long ones which are then replaced again by the following generation by even shorter ones. This is not a case of choosing again the long, flowered maxi dresses of the 1970s. This is an imposition, even if the designers and their customers are not aware of it. It is no longer a case of ‘perhaps you would like to wear this next season’, it is ‘we’ll pretend it’s not happening, but you will wear this next season’.

And since where the celebrities lead, the fashion herd tends to follow, next year you may find yourself wearing obligatory modest dresses, the next year a face-veil and thereafter a burkini instead of a bikini on the beach.

That is, unless you can, yourself, help to reverse what I believe to be a very frightening trend.

About The Author

Sonya Jay Porter is a free-lance writer who joined UKIP in 1994, having previously worked as a journalist in Dubai in the 1980s. Over the past few years she has had articles on various subjects -- including those related to the European Union -- published on several web sites.

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10 Comments

Guy Leven-Torres
on July 3, 2017 at 10:35 am

WE see this in Archaeology too. Changing styles as rhe different peoples overcame one another. A big problem for the Roman authorities. They brought in laws forbidding citizens from adopting barbariand styles. Times never change only we have our useful liberal idiots helping matter along.

If women are free to choose what they wear then who are we to stop them? Whether modestly or not. However it seems that Muslim women are obliged to wear modest clothes or risk being assaulted, spat at, called “whore” or otherwise abused by Muslim men. This is what must be opposed.

I cannot see this attitude changing any time soon. As usual, the root of the difficulty is in the Koran:

[Quran 24:31] And tell the believing women to subdue their eyes, and maintain their chastity. They shall not reveal any parts of their bodies, except that which is necessary. They shall cover their chests, (with their Khimar) and shall not relax this code in the presence of other than their husbands, their fathers, the fathers of their husbands, their sons, the sons of their husbands, their brothers, the sons of their brothers, the sons of their sisters, other women, the male servants or employees whose sexual drive has been nullified, or the children who have not reached puberty. They shall not strike their feet when they walk in order to shake and reveal certain details of their bodies. All of you shall repent to God, O you believers, that you may succeed.

I just noticed this phrase: “employees whose sexual drive has been nullified”. It seems that the Koran condones castration.

Generally speaking I have to cover up quite a bit in summer because, being very fair skinned with freckles, I tend to burn horrendously. I wouldn’t cover up because it was expected of me though.

When swimming, I wear a standard one piece costume simply because I don’t want some fancy ‘swimwear’ or bikini coming adrift when I’m doing a fast front crawl, for example. Not that I have the figure for a bikini these days!

For leisure, as in sunbathing (shadebathing in my case)and an occasional dip in an outdoor pool (beaches are not an option due to lack of any shade) I am somewhat at a loss to understand why anyone would want to be encumbered by even the tiniest bikini.

I was a member of a naturist club where I could swim and shadebathe in my birthday suit. Much nicer! By next summer I will have joined one again.

Several beaches and clubs around the country so go on, get your kit off and have done with it.

Yet another example of the creeping islamicisation of the Western world. In my opinion the fashion for great long beards on young men is another sign of it.
I dress modestly because of my age, and if young women want to stop displaying their belly buttons, I have no argument with that. But the fact that muslim women are driving fashion because designers want to make loadsa money out of them and foist it on the rest of us is disturbing and must be resisted.

Being rather ‘more mature’ Sonya, I shall stick to what is already in my wardrobe! But I think it’s extremely worrying that young people are, without realizing it, being ‘groomed’ for the coming ‘Islamisation trend’. No hope of a feminazi day of rage, though, they go as Brainwashed lambs to the slaughter, taking their children with them on the journey. One day their daughters will curse them for it.